


to tame;

by weird_bird (2weird4)



Series: hollywood ancient world au [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Ancient Greece & Rome, Humor, M/M, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-09 03:47:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10403199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2weird4/pseuds/weird_bird
Summary: “This contortion requires a separation of what the mind believes its limits to be and what the body can truly do.” Deinarchos pushes down his thigh.Tight-jawed against the burn, Damianos tells him, “The only thing that will be separated is your head from your shoulders.”or: damian is sort of alexander the great, dick is not really hephaestion, but they're definitely in love.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title is just the meaning of damian, "to tame."
> 
> deinarchos is a greek name meaning approximately the same thing as richard ("ruler").
> 
> basically this thing is just a self-indulgent, splashy, shameless mashup of ancient world fiction tropes born from my lifelong love of that shit and my obsession w alexander and hephaestion and achilles and patroclus, etc. there is _no_ historical accuracy to be found here. i would apologize, but i had a great time.
> 
>  **warnings:** so here damian is like, boy conqueror. you can decide how young that is. dick is implied to be in his late teens. power dynamics are kind of wonky, but everything is consensual. there are references to slavery and prostitution. there is explicit sexual content, see end-notes for content of sex scenes if you need to. dick and damian spar and there are threats/thoughts of violence from damian to dick, but nothing too serious. the biggest warning is that one battle scene _does_ get pretty bloody.

“Him? Is he my instructor?” Damianos points to the broad-shouldered man running the youth around the dirt track.

“Look more closely, Dami,” his mother chastises.

Damianos’s eyes flick without interest over the young men, whose sun-bronzed bodies bundle together like a shoal of fish. 

One darts ahead--at last an end to this tedious race is in sight.

Long of limb, the front-runner has a face with a balance between fullness and angles that suggests he has a handful of years on Damianos. Laughingly, he laps the rest and crosses the chalk line.

“Mother,” Damianos half-growls.

“Wait.”

He watches the older man and then looks fruitlessly for signs of any other. The sun sears his black hair, and he can feel sweat drip down his spine under his tunic. 

Rolling his shoulders, crossing his arms, no shift in position brings him relief.

Most of the runners have departed along with their instructor in protest of the heat. 

Damianos sympathizes.

The young man who won the race alone remains. He wipes a hand over his forehead. Hand on his lean waist, he shifts back and forth on the balls of his feet and rakes back his sweaty dark locks. 

With nothing better to do, Damianos watches him watch the attendant girls with more thoughtfulness than salaciousness. 

And then the youth’s eyes find Damianos’s mother. They widen, a nakedness of expression Damianos sees only on clueless fools deaf to their reputation--most by now know better than to show their face so plainly around the Demon’s Head. “Talia!”

Damianos bristles at such impudence, going for the hilt of his sword as the man all but bounces forward to meet them.

His mother’s nails dig into his biceps, staying his hand. 

“What brings you here?” The man’s golden face splits around a white smile. “This is your son?”

One sculpted eyebrow goes up. Good. Perhaps his mother feels as oddly--unsettled by him as Damianos does. “Deinarchos,” she says smoothly, then places a hand on the top of Damianos’s head as though he is a child and not a burgeoning conqueror. “My son, Damianos.”

Deinarchos drops to a knee before Damianos, he, too, treating him like a boy now. “He resembles Brutus the most,” he remarks, “but his eyes are yours.”

“His spirit is mine.” His mother lifts her chin.

At that, Deinarchos laughs and squeezes Damianos’s shoulder. “In so small a body? Is this the boy you dreamt of, then, whose stride will cross a continent?”

“Tt.” To Damianos’s increasing agitation, his mother remains indulgent. “In time.”

Deinarchos squeezes his shoulder one more time and then stands, brushing the dust off of his knee. “What do you seek from me?”

A bloody death would be ideal.

“I want you to train him,” his mother murmurs, nudging Damianos forward.

“Mother! He cannot be twenty. What could he have to teach me?” Damianos has not yet has an instructor with an absence of grey hair, and that is far better. He does not wish to learn from children and amateurs.

“How long do I have?” Deinarchos asks, stepping in again as well.

Minutes, if Damianos has his way.

His mother gives him an edged smile Damianos cannot read. “A week.”

“A _week!_ By the gods, Mother, how you want me to suffer--”

Unafraid, Deinarchos tugs his arm. “We should not waste another moment of it if you want me to teach you anything, then.”

 

“A ruler,” Deinarchos takes his time telling him, “should be flexible.” When he takes another bite of fruit, juice wends its way down his arm.

Which Damianos watches _upside down_. His back aches, and his tunic must be exposing everything delicate. “I--I cannot--”

Deinarchos sighs. “Let go.”

Humiliatingly, Damianos drops to his face in the dirt.

Deinarchos tilts his head and laps the nectar off his own forearm like the filth he is. “Will you try again?”

Gritting his teeth, Damianos nods and folds his body back gingerly back up again.

Despite his braggadocio when they began, he has to admit that the tasks Deinarchos has set for him are difficult. These stretches and bends of the body, he finds, do require a significant amount of skill.

Of course, _Deinarchos_ demonstrated them so easily that it was as though his very bones were oiled.

“This contortion requires a separation of what the mind believes its limits to be and what the body can truly do.” Deinarchos pushes down his thigh.

Tight-jawed against the burn, Damianos tells him, “The only thing that will be separated is your head from your shoulders.”

 

“Does your mother always supervise your training?” Deinarchos asks with his typical thoughtlessness.

Damianos leans against his wooden sword and glares at him, still struggling to catch his breath. It’s not often that someone outmatches his agility, and under normal circumstances, he can utilize his size to deadly advantage. 

Deinarchos, however, has been spinning and _flipping_ circles around him.

“Will you have to conquer a city and then wait for your mother to claim it in your name?” The tip of his wooden sword edges under Damianos’s ribs.

Irritation shooting up like a projectile from a catapult, Damianos seizes the sword and snaps it in half. He throws away the halves and wheels on his mother. “Leave us.”

His mother, who until now has been watching with approval, allows a scowl to mar her beautiful face for only a moment before she turns and sweeps away, lifting her skirts above the scuffed earth.

With a shrug, Deinarchos twirls his sword and plants it in the ground. “Hand-to-hand, then.”

Some of the tension in the air dissipates with his mother’s departure. She has always overseen his training, yes, ground his failures deeper into his psyche and blown away his victories like so much dust.

She herself is a fierce fighter who Damian has only vanquished once. Murderous alchemy in keen eyes and quick hands. And yet she would rather recline back so as to eat of victory without scrubbing blood from her palms first.

Damianos, for his part, does not mind burying himself to the elbows in the fight.

“This dancing is of no use if you refuse to take a man’s life in battle,” Damianos grumbles, rubbing his sore nose.

“Does victory mean death?” Deinarchos counters and pummels him again.

Warding off further blows with palms against his fists, he tries to twist his momentum against him. “Vanquishing means death. Victory means life.”

He muses on that. “I see no difference.” 

There--an opening. Deinarchos’s moment of philosophical stillness. Rushing in, he strikes and suddenly the world whirls around on itself as Deinarchos trips him with a leg swept under his feet.

Deinarchos does not let him stop until Damianos finally pins him.

Knees astride his shoulders, palms to the ground on either side of his head, he pants, victorious. Looking down at the smiling face between his legs makes his stomach uncomfortable, though, so Damianos dismounts.

He insists on sharing his meal with him, and he does not look from Deinarchos’s open, interested face to his mother’s foreboding one more than once.

By moonlight, Damianos sketches battle plans in the sand. 

Deinarchos leans over, intent, only backing off when Damianos complains about the shadow he casts.

This sort of strategy is, surprisingly, something about which he has little knowledge, though he seems to know at least a scrap of almost everything else. 

Damianos can see how he devours the knowledge and admires that in him for the way it reflects himself.

And then it unnerves him. In one swift sweep of the hand, he obliterates the neat drawings. “Am I right to trust you?” he demands, hating how young he sounds.

Wrapping an arm around his folded leg, chin on his knee, Deinarchos shakes his head. “I cannot tell you that. What I can tell you is that the few years I have on you have taught me this: it is only once you make your own mistakes that you can make your own successes.”

With Damianos dumbstruck, Deinarchos busies himself with a childish rendition of a floppy-winged bird, the silver of the moon catching on his curved lips.

 

Hanging upside down from a tree by the backs of his knees, Deinarchos trails his fingers across Damianos’s shoulders, up the back of his nape.

Damianos fights a shiver. That should not have been his first reaction--he should have planted his sword into Deinarchos at less provocation. 

He resents him deeply. 

First he crosses his arms, then he uncrosses them, remembering his teasing. “Is this part of my training?”

“If I say yes, will you join me?” Flipping upright, Deinarchos extends a hand down to Damianos, that second night.

Declining the hand, he nevertheless joins him, perching on the branch and watching as the sun sinks down beyond rolling green meadows.

Only Damianos’s displeasure disrupts Deinarchos’s chatter. After a while, however, even Deinarchos falls silent, leaning his head against the branch.

The stars open their eyes against the black. Something inside Damianos is silenced, too.

Taking his hand, Deinarchos points their fingers to the sky, brown and gold entwined. Of the stars’ alignments Damianos knows, but in his itinerant childhood, Deinarchos heard different stories about their patterns than he did. And he listens, and he shares his own.

In that tree they remain through dawn’s first pearls and pinks.

Cupping hands around his mouth, Deinarchos teaches him the calls of the songbirds, then teaches him how to make his voice seem like a giant booming across the hills. Eeriest of all, he imitates Damianos.

It embarrasses him terribly. Does he truly sound so much like an affected child and so little like a man with cities felled by his sword and sandal already?

“I talked too much tonight,” Deinarchos rasps, irises still crisp above drooping blues of fatigue. “You had better do the talking next time.”

Clearing his own throat, he touches the faint-stubbled column of Deinarchos’s neck.

Swallowing against his hand and turning his face so slightly into his hand that it could be a trick his tiredness plays, Deinarchos whispers, “I like your voice.”

 

Knife to his throat in the black.

“You don’t have to do this.”

Damianos leans the blunt side of the blade harder against Deinarchos’s silk skin. One movement of the wrist and he could slice him like the fruit on which he feasts. “I cannot leave you here.” 

They depart for the coast in the morning, the Demon’s Head seeking to swallow new territory.

His throat bobs against the metal as he swallows. “Is it that you do not want me to pass on my talents to anyone else?” he asks almost wearily.

Damianos straddles him so that he can look down at him, brow furrowing. “No.”

“No?” Deinarchos pushes up on his elbows, and Damianos lets him, though he still clings to his knife. “What, then?”

With any luck, his expression will be invisible in the gloom. Regardless, he turns his face. “I do not wish to leave without you.”

Deinarchos sucks in air, clearly thrown. 

“I will take you with my camp,” Damianos declares, shifting over him and lifting his knife again.

“As a slave?” His voice is quiet, thoughtful more than upset.

Damianos’s silence is his answer.

“If you take me as a slave,” he says measuredly, “you will regret it. I will cause no end of trouble for you.”

He cannot help the snort. “How much more trouble could you be?”

Deinarchos seems to consider his words. “I’m not saying I will not come willingly.”

Confused, he waits for him to explain. 

“If you would allow it, I would accompany you. As--a trainer, an advisor.” He grips Damianos’s arm. “A friend, if I could be so bold.”

Damianos’s smile spreads slow as honey. “Deinarchos, you are always bold.”

 

“Duck!”

Dropping just in time, Damianos cuts across the man’s thigh. He spits sour blood and grimaces, swiping the back of his hand over his face. As he backs up, he looks for Deinarchos. No sight of him.

He hacks his way through a dozen men, still looking for him. His ear finds his cry, but his eyes do not find his form. Worry crowds his chest.

“Don’t let your guard down, Damianos,” a voice murmurs too close to his ear for his comfort.

It’s pure luck that Deinarchos gets an elbow and not a dagger in the gut. “You idiot!”

Deinarchos gives him a big crooked grin before he skids through the dust, dodging a horse’s legs and hauling the rider down into the dirt with him.

Flurry of _punches,_ not a lick of naked metal in sight.

Damianos does not have time to waste gaping at his--companion’s antics. 

This campaign has been long, gory. At this point, victory would not be nectar of the gods so much as water for a parched throat.

At some point, he becomes aware of Deinarchos behind him. Kicking, punching. Tunic flying around brown legs, black waves matted by blood Damianos can only pray is not his own, though there is no telling. 

Together they cut and push through swathes of soldiers.

Deinarchos bears the brunt of the guards while Damianos forges on to the end.

At last. A lunge, a push of muscle and a roar. Feet planted in the ground as though he could claim the whole globe for himself in a single moment.

His sword cleaves the chief’s neck.

Blood sprays their skin, and Deinarchos turns his head and winces.

Still, when Damianos hoists the head aloft with a trembling hand in matted hair, Deinarchos has eyes only for him.

 

“Would you consider perhaps _drawing_ your sword next time?” Damianos takes a pull from the watered-down wine once his breathing slows enough to allow it. At least it is cool within his tent.

There remains plenty to be planned with the battle finished. 

For now, all there is to do is wait for the fire in their blood to burn down to embers. 

To drink, to eat. To tend their wounded.

He knows not where his mother is. No doubt she will have her criticisms to offer later. She watches him now with a distance in her eyes. This is what she has wanted since she brought him into the world, but these days it seems she spends more time fearing that he will be taken out of it.

Damianos does not fear death.

That is not to say, to his misfortune, that he has no fears.

Deinarchos, nibbling at his damn fruit again, raises his eyebrows at him. “I will take it under consideration.”

“No, you will not,” Damianos sighs.

He laughs with the hysterical undercurrent of battle-exhaustion. A laugh becoming more familiar to Damianos as they hew an arduous path across the earth, but not one so dear to him. “Did I not perform to your expectations?” The fingers of his other hand pull at his bare toes.

Taking his hand, Damianos grabs it so hard he can feel the crust of scabs on his knuckles crack. He shakes his head through the pain. “I expect,” he says flatly, “you to fight to survive.”

“You expect me to kill or be killed,” Deinarchos corrects.

Damianos inclines his head to the side in agreement. To be plain about it, _yes._

“When you agreed to allow me to join you freely, we made it clear that I would not add to the dead.” Deinarchos frowns and pulls his hand away from him. 

“Yes. So keep your head off the pile,” Damianos half-snarls.

Deinarchos lets out a long breath, his chest deflating and eyes rolling to the tent ceiling.

Cuts criss-cross the skin bared where he has pulled his tunic down around his waist. A bruise purples his cheek, the evidence of a badly-cut lip smudges scarlet down his chin. Damianos is sure now that some of the blood in his hair is his own.

Damianos never has been and never will be good at _losing._

Some losses would be more difficult to bear than others.

Although he does not remember moving, both of them are staring now at his hand laying over Deinarchos’s muscled abdomen. The touch makes it rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall.

His fingers shiver against the coarse black hair. He feels powerful enough that he could plunge his hand through him and pull out the puzzle of him. He has never felt so weak.

Until Deinarchos nudges him with his knee, Damianos does not dare look at his face.

“How many times must I tell you?” Taking his hand, Deinarchos does not push it away. He pushes it _down._

Damianos inhales fast through his nose. The shape of him, hard under his palm, hot. Wanting. Eager.

“I am willing.” Deinarchos takes his mouth in a kiss that obliterates all his better judgment.

Climbing over him for more of it, he clutches at his face and all but eats his mouth.

And he laughs, in case Damianos were to forget who he was kissing, somewhere between joy and the gentlest of mockery. And he pulls at his lip more softly, tongue sliding soft, soft past his lips.

As they share kisses, each sparking down his spine more than the last, Damianos rubs him through his tunic.

Deinarchos’s hips jerk. A ragged gasp against his mouth, and he spreads his thighs around Damianos’s slimmer hips. Fingers fumbling the clasps, he strips Damianos of his armor and then clasps the nape of his neck for another needy kiss.

“What can I--”

“Here--”

A breeze strays a peek of afternoon light into the tent. The women and men of the camp are _meters_ away, but they could be over a mountain and across the sea for all Damianos cares.

Oil, fragrant oil flooding down Deinarchos’s thighs. Smooth skin over hard muscle glistens in the strip of sunlight. He sprawls back on his elbows, sinew of his biceps and bright of his teeth warning and inviting at once.

Soldiers are an obscene people. Away from their wives, they gossip of round asses and full breasts. Damianos dismissed their talk. Sex would only cloud his mind, he’d been lectured time and time again, and what he sees of his men stumbling out of brothels leads him to agree.

If this was mere sex, perhaps he could find the strength in him to deny Deinarchos’s beckoning.

This is something more dangerous.

He all but tumbles between Deinarchos’s legs, and the bottle tips over with a clink. He is more dangerous than he can say, and he sinks down onto him.

Deinarchos shows him this, too. Taking his hand, he presses it to himself as Damianos thrusts between his thighs. So he cups his cock and pulls it in whatever sense of rhythm he still has. 

Hair hanging in his face, he slams against him. Excess energy from their fight only stokes his desire. His precome slicks up the crease by his cock, their balls press and shafts grind by each other, fierce friction.

Hands under his knees, Damianos pushes his thighs down--makes _him_ strain this time as he thrusts and thrusts, and that only makes Deinarchos’s eyes grow blacker and glow harder.

Trapping him between hard muscles, Deinarchos digs his nails into his back and bites his shoulder.

Deinarchos may be beneath him, but Damianos has no doubt about who it is that is being claimed.

“Damianos,” he hisses in his ear. _”Damian,_ yes.”

 

“Your mother is Talia, the Demon’s Head, and you consider womanhood demeaning?”

It sounds ludicrous phrased as such. Nonetheless--”Crossing that line between the sexes is the domain of…” Damianos cannot finish the thought.

Deinarchos’s eyebrow lifts, but mercifully, he says nothing to make Damianos’s cheeks burn darker. 

The sun has already climbed the blue too much in the time they have been arguing, sequestered on the other side of the hill away from his other advisors, whom he relies on with less and less frequency and faith these days. 

Nearing noon on their fourth day of attempting to negotiate a peace agreement with Bialyan forces much larger in number than their own. 

They have been far more tentative than Damianos would normally prefer. Delicacy is required, he knows. 

Still, _this_ is not what he had in mind.

“Waiting girls hear everything.” Deinarchos crosses muscled arms over his chest. There’s something suggestive in his eyes.

Damianos will rarely get anything out of him about most of the lives he led before their meeting, and there are more important matters at hand right now, so for the moment, he leaves it at an itch of curiosity. “That is the very reason why I am disguising several from my camp as his.”

“What is it that you told me before you took the spear from a charging horseman and ran it through the princeps by your own hand? ‘If you want it done well, do it yourself.’”

At that, Damianos just scoffs and turns his head, unwilling to be swayed by his words turned against him. Damn Deinarchos.

“Whose ears can you trust better than your own?” he coaxes again. His arm slides around his chest, a warm weight that could sway him to any mistake.

When he looks around furtively and determines they have privacy enough here, he allows the affection with a little “hm” in the back of his throat. Pointedly turning his head, he kisses the pink shell of _Deinarchos’s_ ear.

And Deinarchos laughs in delight. It’s Damianos’s favorite of his many laughs for the way it nestles down into his chest as fondly as it left his mouth. “You _are_ learning. Be that as it may, I am too tall and broad of shoulder to pass well for a woman these days.”

These days. Yes, he will squeeze the story from him later.

“The less filtered your information, the better,” Deinarchos continues.

A fair point. “How do I know this is not some ploy to have me dressed as a woman?” Still, he fumbles for his dignity.

“A mistake to assume I ever want you dressed,” Deinarchos teases, his eyes dancing and his fingertips edging just under Damianos’s breastplate.

Damianos exhales hard. Defeat.

“Should I take that as a _yes?"_

“You may take that as a _fine."_

 

“How was it?” Deinarchos’s eyes snap open at Damianos’s first footfall inside the tent despite his deceptively relaxed slumber a moment before.

His quick alertness comes as a relief to Damianos, who had to force him to sleep inside his tent. Not because Deinarchos did not wish to share his bed, no. Because Deinarchos resented anything separating him from the stars, even thin canvas.

Setting down his lamp, Damianos kneels beside Deinarchos, wine-red fabric spilling across the mussed bed-coverings.

Deinarchos reaches for him immediately. He seeks to dismantle all his own careful handiwork, all he draped Damianos in, Damianos protesting every flick of makeup, every glittering jewel. Half of it humiliation, the other half hesitation at the unexpected intimacy of being dressed with so much care by hands that knew him so well.

First the near-gaudy golden necklace, which Deinarchos unclasps with his arms around Damianos. Mouth to his neck, he murmurs, “Have you learned anything so urgent it cannot wait until morning?”

Unsure of the answer Deinarchos seeks, Damianos narrows his eyes at him when he lifts his head. “There is only one thing I can think of that cannot wait until morning.”

His eyes crinkle. Dipping his head to his throat again, he raises the edge of the gossamer veil that shades Damianos’s vision crimson. He brushes hot lips over his Adam’s apple. Then he smooths back the veil over his forehead and tips his chin up. “Look at me.”

Damianos raises his eyes to his face, demure as a bride until his lips curl like a concubine.

The look alone makes Deinarchos’s breath hitch audibly. His thumb smooths below Damianos’s eyes, careful not to ruin the kohl he’d so painstakingly applied.

Damianos cannot wait for him to take his time. Drawing him close in the flickering golden light, he crushes their mouths together. The dried-blood color from Damianos’s lips stains all the way up his fine cheekbones. 

“You play your part well,” Deinarchos breathes, nosing the dark waves of his hair that have come loose from the dislodged veil.

Damianos sinks his teeth into his thumb. “Not so well, I hope, that you have forgotten who I am.”

Deinarchos slides his thumb over his lips and tucks it inside his mouth. “Not in this lifetime, Damianos.” Another kiss to his neck, and then he slips the fabric from his shoulders and covers it in his mouth instead. Pulls the clasp from it so it spills down to his chest.

Turning his face, Damianos gathers it as it pools down his ribs.

A suck just this side of too hard at his exposed nipple before Deinarchos distracts himself elsewhere. His hands gather the skirts up and push them up his thighs past the muscle along his hips and abdomen. He lowers his mouth there and bites in a kiss no one will see. “I have not forgotten what you are.” Voice a breeze against sensitive skin.

Damianos all but closes his thighs around his head. Shoving Deinarchos over, he lets him grasp his backside and lift him over his face. 

“Hold your skirt up for me.”

He bares his teeth, but he does, clenching handfuls of fine cloth and staring down at the face between his thighs.

Wicked mouth on his entrance. Closing warm around his sac. Tongue flat on the underside. 

Because he can’t seem to decide, Damianos decides for him.

Grabbing Deinarchos’s face, he pushes his head back until he can push his cock past his lips.

A gasp around the thick of him, and his nails curl into Damianos’s ass.

He finds purchase with his knees in the bedspread as he thrusts, guided by the firm hands on him and the eager wet throat beneath him.

And even more than that, Deinarchos’s eyes beguile, whether shut with tear-sticky eyelashes or open with brimming blue. 

Pause to recover breath, and Deinarchos mumbles _witch boy._

Yet Damianos knows he isn’t the only one caught under that most ancient of spells.

When he finishes, he splatters thick and white over his face, dripping down reddened lips to sweat-shining clavicles. 

Deinarchos drags his fingers through the mess of his seed and sucks it away like a delicacy he’ll never taste again. 

Before Damianos’s mind has reformed, his head dives under his skirts again.

He cannot decide whether the devious mouth massaging his soft cock back to fullness is reward or punishment.

Either way, he deems the entire enterprise well worth it. 

 

“What is that?” 

Damianos folds down the papyrus. “You can read.”

“Brat. I’m busy.” At an important task indeed. One of the little girls in the village Damianos supplied with grain has put frustratingly tiny braids in his hair. As a reward for his generosity, Deinarchos is picking them out like a monkey, Damianos’s head pillowed in his lap. “Read to me.”

“It is a message from my enemies in the north. Intercepted by my troops.”

“Which enemies? I have more trouble naming your friends.” Cheekiness aside, he _hms_ a _go on._

“It is about me.”

“Of course.”

“Of course.” Damianos shakes out the papyrus again and squints at the letters. A tricky dialect that takes him a few moments more than usual to decipher. “I have not actually read it yet.”

“Read it now, then,” Deinarchos prompts.

“And if it is a private matter?”

He yanks a clump of hair hard enough to sting. “I will leave you alone with your shame.”

Shoulders settled down into his lap again after the disturbance, Damianos shakes out the papyrus with intent this time. “‘Damianos has been defeated only once.’” Scowling, he stops.

“Only once?” A peal of laughter from Deinarchos. “They must be too cold to count properly up north.” Jostling up against his back, he snatches the papyrus from him.

When he reads it, he laughs his way through it.

And when he hears it, even Damianos cannot clamp his lips tightly enough against the huff of amusement that escapes his chest.

“‘Damianos has been defeated only once, and that was by Deinarchos’s thighs.’”

**Author's Note:**

>  **warnings, cont:** sex scenes include intercrural, crossdressing, and oral as well as consensual roughness.
> 
> the last line is from some dubiously historical letters dubiously attributed to diogenes of sinope re: alexander and hephaestion, and that's as close to historical as i got.


End file.
